Decentralized crypto aggregator Jupiter has recently faced significant controversy after announcing a collaboration with a controversial influencer.

Jupiter’s Collaboration with Irene Zhao Sparks Outrage

On July 22, the anonymous founder of Jupiter, known as @weremeow, announced a collaboration with Singaporean influencer Irene Zhao. This collaboration aims to improve the “meme coin meta” and provide “degens an on-chain mom to care for them when they are sad.” The initiative seeks to address major issues plaguing the current meme coin launch environment, such as “fake wide distribution, sniping,” and “lying influencers.”

“If these works, ideally it can serve as a model for other memecoins in contrast to the sniping, opaque control, instadumping prone, paranoid launch meta we see today.” – @weremeow

The announcement received swift backlash from the crypto community, accusing Jupiter of endorsing dubious activities by associating with Zhao.

Controversial Past of Irene Zhao

Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT highlighted the irony of the collaboration, pointing out Zhao’s previous involvement in opaque dealings with her project So-Col. ZachXBT alleged that Zhao had engaged in secret deals that lacked transparency, leaving early investors in the dark.

“Hilarious seeing Irene Zhao involved with a ‘solution’ for opaque allocations when she literally did exactly this with her project SOCOL by rugging all of the early investors by doing a secret deal with DWF where terms were not disclosed to them and community had zero knowledge…” – ZachXBT

In February 2023, market maker DWF Labs invested $1.5 million in Zhao’s startup So-Col by acquiring native SIMP tokens. Zhao had reportedly pledged to lock the tokens in a one-year vesting period, set to end in February 2024. However, blockchain data later revealed that DWF received over 3 million SIMP tokens in March and transferred approximately 2.6 million SIMP to the KuCoin crypto exchange within the same timeframe.

Irene Zhao’s Journey in the Crypto Space

Zhao gained popularity in the crypto space in early 2022 by selling her photos as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), amassing over $5 million. She later launched an NFT collection called IreneDAO, aimed at disrupting the creator economy. Initially, the collection saw a price floor surge to 1.49 ETH but has since plummeted to 0.05 ETH, representing an 87% decline from its all-time highs.

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